The daily production of millions of tons of various organic wastes and by products annually can be primarily attributed to the operations of municipalities, including the production of sewage and wastewater, and various industries, such as the animal and poultry industries. Waste management costs, coupled with rising interest for resource recovery and environmentally safe practices, have promoted tremendous activity to develop alternative processes and treatment technologies to manage non-hazardous wastes.
Municipalities, for example, produce in excess of 350 million tons of bio-solids each year. At the same time, landfills are diminishing creating future disposal problems. Composting and incineration can be used, but both options are limited in their feasibility. Incineration creates exhaust fumes that can contain components that are damaging to the ozone layer or are considered greenhouse gases. Composting, another alternative, requires less general space than a landfill, but the composting process takes time to work. “Land spreading” is yet another alternative being explored to handle the large amount of the municipality wastes, but the bio-solids are mostly considered Class B wastes that contain pathogens and other enteric bacteria and odor. Also, land spreading is susceptible to runoff, which can be a significant source of pollution, such as ground water pollution.
Paper mills, fish and feed processing wastes approach 150 million tons or more a year. Animal and poultry industries produce at least 100 million tons of waste products per year. These waste products are causing significant concerns because of disposal, concentrated usage and lagoon storage contributes to pollution. The high nutrient values in the water and solids also require expensive treatment methods, which these industries cannot economically afford. In addition, serious health threats can emerge as the result of natural disasters, such as hurricanes or floods, that would give rise to increased pollution, such as that from the hog farms in North Carolina during and after Hurricane Hugo or sewage runoff and spillover after Hurricane Katrina.
Commercial organizations are constantly assessing the potential value of the resources that can be extracted from organic wastes and sludges, especially if the materials are mass reduced because of high moisture content, disinfected of bacteria and viruses and are free of obnoxious odors. The ever increasing waste management costs, coupled with renewed interests for resource recovery and environmentally safe management practices, have promoted interest in alternative management technologies to manage the biosolids from municipal sewage treatment operations and industrial sludges.
The primary source of renewable media are biosolids from municipal sewage treatment operations and industrial organic sludges. Commercial organizations are well aware of the potential value of these resources, if the materials were disinfected of bacteria and viruses, and were free of obnoxious odors. Previously, an effective way of both disinfecting and rendering the biosolids odor neutral has not be available. the biosolids have predominantly been disposed of in landfills, land spread in the immediate area of the waste generator until the soil is over-saturated with nutrients or simply dumped into lagoons or piles. Water runoff and air pollution from these practices contributes to endangerment of public health and general degradation of the quality of life.
Therefore, it would be beneficial to develop an apparatus and process that can a) efficiently convert organic wastes and sludges into soil mediums or alternative fuel mediums; b) ensure that the soil mediums and alternative fuel mediums are non-odoriferous, non-pathogenic and/or virus-free; c) mass reduce large quantities of organic sludges and wastes; d) mass reduce organic wastes and sludges by a 5 to 1 ratio; e) produce soil mediums or alternative fuel mediums that are or approach Class A or “exceptional quality” rating making them safe to recycle, f) convert both solids and liquids to soil mediums or alternative fuel mediums, where the treated solids can be safely recycled to agriculture markets and liquids can be recycled as wash-down water, beneficially recycled for reuse in the manufacturing of the original product or recycled for irrigation, and/or g) reduce or significantly reduce the “footprint” of other conventional waste recycling apparatus by reducing the space/area these devices occupy.